Monday, April 4, 2016

The Shapes the Pwoermd Takes

The pwoermd, the poem of but a single word, was originally just a written word. A lone word. With time, the pwoermd took different forms. People interpreted what a word could be.

To start, a pwoermd could be a spoken word, an isolated word somehow able to to mean only from its sound. The oral and aural pwoermd might be and extended sequence of vocables expressed in a single breath. It might consist of nonsense sounds or weirdly meaning sounds. Even a "real" word might do. It merely need be spoken with the intent to speak a poem.

Asemic pwoermd by Stephen Nelson

Even in its written form, a pwoermd could take a new form. Just as an aural pwoermd could be nonsensical, so could a visible pwoermd. Consisting of a sequence of characters, or a single one, the asemic pwoermd could suggest written language without expressing direct meaning.

Asemic pwoermds depend on their visual form for expression, so they are also visual pwoermds. But even semantic pwoermds with a specific required visual form can be visual pwoermds, because they meaning depends on their precise visual presence.

The final visual form of the pwoermd is as an object, in which case the object that carries the pwoermd is also the pwoermd.